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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   3767 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for November 27, 2022

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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So, what are you reading?

I'm still on Dorian Gray. The prose seems more to my liking this time around. Must be the influence of other books.

The Reformation by Diarmaid MacCulloch — it's a little too comprehensive for my taste, and thus a bit of a slog, but interesting enough that I'm going to finish it. Broad theme: Once the universal hold of European Catholicism is broken, various polities discover through successive rounds of bloodshed that it's no longer practical to have One True State Religion.

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A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

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